Extending Moodle: Microsoft Teams Integrations

(Time to Read: 4 mins.)

Key points in this arti­cle:

Advan­tages of using Teams with Moo­dle | Fea­tures | Use cas­es | Inte­gra­tion and auto­mat­ic syn­chro­niza­tion | Microsoft block and oth­er Moo­dle tools

For a cou­ple of years, eLSup­port has had a back­burn­er project going to exper­i­ment with ways to con­nect VCC’s Moo­dle learn­ing man­age­ment sys­tem with our Microsoft Teams envi­ron­ment.

Advantages of using Teams with Moodle

About Moodle

The Moo­dle Learn­ing Man­age­ment Sys­tem was orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped in 1999 as a doc­tor­al project explor­ing Con­struc­tivist online learn­ing the­o­ry. It has since become one of the most pop­u­lar LMSes in the world.

Moo­dle is our open-source, elearn­ing “bedrock” plat­form, pro­vid­ing thou­sands of VCC stu­dents, staff, and fac­ul­ty with a col­lege-wide struc­tured envi­ron­ment for online lessons, dis­cus­sions, activ­i­ties, and high-stakes quizzes and exams. VCC has been using Moo­dle for almost 20 years.

As pop­u­lar or ubiq­ui­tous as Moo­dle is at VCC, it isn’t the solu­tion to every prob­lem; there are a num­ber of activ­i­ties or inter­ac­tions that Moo­dle was nev­er designed to do, and that’s where inte­grat­ing it with anoth­er plat­form like Teams can be advan­ta­geous; Teams allows Instruc­tors to cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for real-time events, like live video meet­ings, real-time group chats, and col­lab­o­ra­tive author­ing.

About Teams

Microsoft Teams is part of the Office 365 envi­ron­ment, a mas­sive­ly pop­u­lar busi­ness pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tool suite, orig­i­nal­ly designed to help peo­ple work togeth­er by com­mu­ni­cat­ing and shar­ing doc­u­ments. It has evolved into a rich ecosys­tem of apps from hun­dreds of com­mer­cial ven­dors. Microsoft Teams for Edu­ca­tion aims the Teams envi­ron­ment at the needs of edu­ca­tors at all lev­els.

The whole can be greater than the sum

Using Teams and Moo­dle does not have to be a “one or the oth­er” propo­si­tion: you can use Moo­dle for its strengths, like course struc­ture, grad­ing, or enroll­ment man­age­ment, and you can also take advan­tage of Teams for its strengths, like real-time col­lab­o­ra­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.  

This excel­lent video from Uni­ver­si­ty of East Lon­don shows the advan­tages of each plat­form and how using them togeth­er makes for an even bet­ter learn­ing envi­ron­ment: 

Features, in a Nutshell

Here are how the fea­tures in Moo­dle and Teams can com­ple­ment each oth­er:

Live Interactive Sessions

• In Moo­dle: Use Moo­dle to orga­nize course con­tent, assign­ments, and quizzes. 
• In Teams: Sched­ule live class­es and inter­ac­tive ses­sions using Teams’ video con­fer­enc­ing fea­ture. Dur­ing these ses­sions, you can use tools like Microsoft White­board for col­lab­o­ra­tive brain­storm­ing, break­out rooms for small group dis­cus­sions, and live polls to gauge under­stand­ing in real-time. 

Real-Time Collaboration on Projects

• In Moo­dle: Assign group projects and pro­vide detailed instruc­tions and resources with­in Moo­dle. 
• In Teams: Cre­ate ded­i­cat­ed chan­nels for each project group in Teams. Stu­dents can use these chan­nels to com­mu­ni­cate, share files, and col­lab­o­rate on doc­u­ments using Microsoft 365 apps like Word, Excel, and Pow­er­Point. Teams’ real-time edit­ing capa­bil­i­ties ensure smooth col­lab­o­ra­tion and imme­di­ate feed­back. 

Enhanced Communication and Support

• In Moo­dle: Use Moo­dle to post announce­ments, course updates, and assign­ment dead­lines. 
• In Teams: Use Teams for ongo­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion and sup­port. Instruc­tors can hold vir­tu­al office hours, answer stu­dent queries through chat, and pro­vide instant feed­back on assign­ments. Teams’ inte­gra­tion with Out­look can help man­age cal­en­dars and sched­ule one-on-one meet­ings with stu­dents.

Sample Use-Case Scenarios

VCC’s Cen­tre for Teach­ing, Learn­ing, and Research has devel­oped sam­ple use cas­es that our Instruc­tors can use to devel­op their teach­ing strate­gies for using Moo­dle with Teams.

• KB1247 — Using Microsoft Teams with Moo­dle for online teach­ing
  (Sam­ple use cas­es describ­ing the ratio­nale and goals for using Teams with Moo­dle.)

Can integrating Moodle and Teams be seamless?

The short answer is “no”, but the tran­si­tion between Moo­dle and Teams can be made eas­i­er and more con­ve­nient for the end-user. Stu­dents and instruc­tors are always busy and pressed for time, and they’re usu­al­ly very goal-ori­ent­ed. The eas­i­er it is for them to move from one work space to anoth­er to meet their needs, the more like­ly it is that they’ll use the inte­gra­tion fre­quent­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly.

“Inte­grat­ing plat­forms” is a some­what neb­u­lous term, but essen­tial­ly we want the user to be able to move from Moo­dle to Teams and back in as few mouse-clicks as pos­si­ble. We also need the user’s cre­den­tials and secure online ses­sion to be main­tained, so that they don’t have to login to each sys­tem every time.

Easing setup and maintenance: Automatic Sync between Moodle and Teams

It’s pos­si­ble to cre­ate a real-time con­nec­tion between your Moo­dle course and a ded­i­cat­ed Class Team. Instead of man­u­al­ly cre­at­ing a Class Team and invit­ing stu­dents to join, it would be a lot eas­i­er to have the Moo­dle course auto­mat­i­cal­ly syn­chro­nize itself to its own cus­tom Class Team. The Microsoft 365 Class Teams inte­gra­tion for Moo­dle pro­vides an auto­mat­ic con­nec­tion between Moo­dle and Teams to do that work. This is what eLSup­port has enabled to cre­ate more uni­fi­ca­tion between Moo­dle and Teams.

How does it work?

Oper­a­tional­ly, when a VCC Instruc­tor fills out a Moo­dle-Teams Inte­gra­tion request form, eLearn­ing Sup­port acti­vates a Class Team syn­chro­niza­tion for the instruc­tor’s Moo­dle course, trig­ger­ing the course enroll­ment to auto­mat­i­cal­ly pop­u­late the Class Team’s name, owner(s), and mem­bers. The Moo­dle course “Teach­ers” become Team Own­ers of the Class Team, and the Moo­dle “Stu­dents” become Mem­bers of the Class Team. Any changes to enroll­ments or roles in Moo­dle are auto­mat­i­cal­ly reflect­ed in the Class Team in real-time.

• KB1329 — Get­ting a Com­pan­ion Team for a Moo­dle Course
  (Intro­duc­ing Moo­dle-Teams inte­gra­tion ben­e­fits, and how to request it for your Moo­dle course.)

The Microsoft inte­gra­tion is made vis­i­ble in Moo­dle and can be some­what man­aged by the Instruc­tor using the Microsoft block in the Moo­dle course. (Adding that block is part of the ser­vice that eLSup­port pro­vides when set­ting up the Moo­dle > Teams syn­chro­nized Class Team.)

• KB1337 — Learn about Moodle’s Microsoft block
  (A Moo­dle add-on from Microsoft that helps Instruc­tors con­nect their Moo­dle expe­ri­ence to Office365 ser­vices.)

Creating Teams meeting links inside Moodle

A “Teams Meet­ing” tool­bar but­ton inside Moodle’s built-in edi­tor makes it easy to sched­ule a Teams meet­ing and add the “Join” link to any Moo­dle resource or activ­i­ty.

• KB1340 — Sched­ul­ing a Teams Meet­ing inside Moodle’s edi­tor

Status and Summary

The use­ful­ness of VCC Moo­dle con­tin­ues to be improved and mod­i­fied via plu­g­ins that improve core fea­tures, or by LTI con­nec­tions to inte­grate remote learn­ing sys­tems, to ben­e­fit teach­ers and learn­ers alike.